English Listening: The Lost Keys | Episode 13

Listen to a story about how may parents lost the keys to their house!

You’ll also learn how to link consonant sounds to vowel sounds.

Welcome to the English Teacher Melanie Podcast, a podcast for intermediate to advanced English learners who want to improve their English listening and speaking skills!

Each episode includes a story and a pronunciation tip. In the story, I use core vocabulary, the most common words in English, to tell a real world story. The pronunciation tip will help you understand natural spoken English.

You’ll hear the story twice. The first time, the story is a little slower than normal. It sounds funny because I used editing software to change the speed of the story and make it slower. After the pronunciation tip, you’ll hear the story again, but at a regular speed.

THE STORY

This is a story about something that happened to my mom & dad about a year ago. They had gone out to do some shopping, and somewhere along the way they lost the key to their house. My dad left the house first, and my mom locked the door as she was leaving. She claims that she put the keys on top of the car to give to my dad. That’s the last time anyone saw the keys. When they got home, each waited for the other to open the door to the house. That’s when they realized the keys were gone. They spent the rest of day searching high & low for the keys, but they couldn’t find them.

My parents decided to wait a few days before changing the locks in case someone returned the keys. Their house has an alarm system and there was nothing on the keys that could identify them as keys to their house, so they weren’t worried about someone using the keys to get in.

You may think it’s odd to wait for someone to return the keys, but this actually happens in Canada! A charity came up with a very innovative service to encourage people to donate to them. They make identification tags for your keys. Each tag has a unique number on it, and that unique number tells this charity who & what address the keys belong to. Anyone anywhere in Canada who finds a set of keys with an ID tag from this charity can drop the keys in any mailbox or take them to the post office. Canada Post sends the keys to the charity. The charity uses the number on the key tag to look up the address of the owner in their database, and mails the keys back to the owner. For free. It’s a worthy charity & a great service, so many people donate money to it.

Eight days after my parents lost the keys, the keys arrived in the mail. The keys must have fallen off the car after my parents left the house, and a kind, anonymous person found them and put them in the mail. The charity sent the keys back to my parents.

NOTE:The charity I talk about in the story is The War Amps. The key tag service helps the War Amps raise money to help amputees. I didn’t talk about the specific charity in the story because it’s difficult to explain using just core vocabulary. It’s a charity that helps amputees. An amputee is someone who has had part of his/her body (usually part of a leg or an arm) amputated. To amputate is to cut off or remove a part of someone’s body, usually part of a leg, foot, arm or hand. For example, after the bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon, many people had to have their legs amputated (removed) because of damage to their legs from the bomb.

PRONUNCIATION TIP

Listen to some sounds from the story. Can you understand what I’m saying?

this is a

keys on

them as

think it’s

happens in

One of the main features of English pronunciation is linking. It’s part of the rhythm of English. To link things together, means to connect them. In spoken English, words are connected together so that there is no pause between the words. Linking words together sounds more natural & makes your speech more fluid.

One of the most common methods of linking, is to link a consonant sound at the end of one word, to the vowel sound at the beginning of the next word, so that the second word sounds like a syllable of the first word. Listen again:

This is a story

she put the keys on top of the car

there was nothing on the keys that could identify them as keys to their house

You may think it’s odd

this actually happens in Canada

Most of the time, content words are linked to function words, or function words are linked together. You might not be able to hear the function words, because they are linked to content words.

When people start learning English, they learn to pronounce every word individually. They have trouble listening to natural spoken English, because they are listening for separate words. The more you listen to natural spoken English, the more you will get used to all the strange sounds that come from linking words together, and you will stop listening for each individual word.

Imitation is a great way to add linking to your spoken English. Practice different phrases & sentences that you hear. The more you practice, the easier it becomes to link words together.

Comments

Hi Teacher Melanie!! First of all , I want to thank you very much for your great lessons.
I don’t understand one thing on this episode, How the parents could enter to their House before they found the keys ? Maybe it’s a stupid question but really i didn’t understand.
Thank you !

I love about the story!! I listened twice and want to do something !!! I have a small device voice recording, so I recorded my voice with the lose keys passage!! When I listen my voice record, it’s not good to hear at all!!?? because the way I pronounce was like reading word by word…. So frustrating !!! So, I listened a gain n I think I figured it out what i was missing!! As you said, the linking words are very important for the englis Learner. Next time when I read or talk I ‘ll be more careful the connection of words n hopefully the way I talk n read must be improve more n more!!

Hi Teacher Melanie!! First of all , I heartily want to thank you for your dedication and time to help us to learn english. I’m very happy I found your web site, it has important things that I haven’t found in any other english site. I will give 2 examples,THE FIRST ONE:I DOWNLOADED ONE LESSON AND IT WENT STRAIGHT TO MY FOLDER of english lesson on my computer, I DID’NT HAVE TO CUT AND PASTE FROM ONE FOLDER TO ANOTHER, as I always have to do when I download a lesson from other sites. THE SECOND ONE: I sent it to my smartphone, and the best surpise was : THE TRANSCRIPT WAS ALSO ON MY SMARTPHONE!! VERY NICE AND HELPFUL! !! I was so glad!!! now I DON’T NEED TO PRINT THE TRANSCRIPT ANYMORE ,if i don’t want to, MANY THANKS. So far I haven’t found any other english website so useful .You got a big fan ,PLEASE EXCUSE MY GRAMMAR MISTAKES and keep send more and more cool lessons, I have learned a lot from them.This is the best english podcast site ever!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!!!

Hi, Teacher Melanie
Thanks for your podcast, I have a question about the Eiesode 13 that
Don’t you scare the charity will copy your key before they send to you? (maybe it’s negative thinking but it’s probably can happen)
Anyway don’worry about that I just wonder on it.

You can say,
“Aren’t you scared that the charity will copy your key before they send it back to you?”

You’re right. This is a possibility, but it’s not something we are worried about. In Canada, we have a lot of trust in charities. We expect that the people who work for this charity are good people who would not do something like this. We trust that the charity will not hire someone who would do this. It’s illegal, so if someone copied the key & tried to use it to get into our house, it would be very bad for us, but we can go to the police & that person will be charged with a crime. This is bad for the charity. If that happens, no one will want to give money to the charity. So, there is a level of trust in our society that this won’t happen.

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About Melanie

I help English learners move from the classroom into the real world by teaching you real world sentences and helping you understand natural spoken English. I also help you find the best study tips and training techniques that work for you!

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